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“It’s been three years. Three years since he walked out of my house and never came back. Three years since I’ve so much as heard his voice. Three years since I’ve been pining for a boy who was never even mine.”

Okay, I really don’t want to write up a long review for this, because I’m still suffering from the impact of giving another popular NA title a one star review that everyone else loves, but all I see is problematic content! So anyways, I’m going to try to keep this review short and just highlight the huge problem I had with this story.

I was very uncomfortable with the ages of the love interests in this book. For the majority of the book they are seventeen and twenty-one. They have explicit sex (most of which is voyeurism), and they leave the state with each other, but they never discuss how she isn’t eighteen yet. This just completely stunted my enjoyed for this book.

And more importantly (and grossly), this book has a lot of flashbacks to them being young. And in the prologue, we get to see Briar as only fourteen-years-old trying to seduce Asher who was seventeen at the time. The author tries to make it look like the fourteen-year-old is the one throwing herself at the seventeen-year-old, but like, the seventeen-year-old still makes the fourteen-year-old orgasm. I don’t care if it wasn’t an orgasm through penetration, I can’t be reading this kind of content.

Then, Asher is forced to leave the town they live in, and he forever blames Briar, because he thinks she was upset that he wouldn’t sleep with her. Now, Asher is on a mission to hate her forever upon his return when he is twenty-one. And, then when it comes out why he really got sent away, everyone is villainizing someone who was just trying to protect a fourteen-year-old. Honestly, this book was one of my most uncomfortable reading experiences yet.

And I’m probably going to be put on some government list now, because I had to look up the age of consent in Arizona, where the majority of this book takes place, but: “In Arizona, the age of consent is 18 years old, according to Arizona Revised Statutes 13-1405.” And I’m just like, why did none of her beta or proof readers tell her to just up the age to the main female protagonist so people would feel gross as hell reading this story?

The ages just ruined this book for me, without question. If you guys are looking for a love to hate, sexy time book, where the characters are both younger, and the ages won’t skeeve you out, please pick up Punk 57, Bully, or Corrupt by Penelope Douglas. They are done so much better and so much more legal-feeling.

Bad Habit? This should have been named Illegal Habit. Or at the least, Uncomfortable Habit, because I was the entire time reading.

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